Who This Book Is For

This book is written by phpBB enthusiasts for new and intermediate users. It's ideal if you are just starting with online communities and want a powerful and free tool, or if you've already started with phpBB and want to take it further. Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML and a willingness to learn about phpBB will benefit from this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Foreword

Chapter 2: Introduction to phpBB

Online Communities

Building the Community—The Tools

The Name

The Environment

Why phpBB?

History

Development

Example phpBB Sites

Summary

Chapter 3: Installing and Configuring phpBB

Pre-Installation

Installation

Post-Installation Tasks

Security Tips

Finding Help

Summary

Chapter 4: A Quick Tour of phpBB

Visitor Experience

Moderator Experience

Administrator Experience

Summary

Chapter 5: Customizing Your Forum

phpBB Styles

Structure of a Style

Editing phpBB Files

Installing a New Style

Create or Customize

Customizing Through the Stylesheet

Customizing through Images

Hacking phpBB

Summary

Chapter 6: Forum Administration

Making Your Board Multi-Lingual

Avatars: Enabling and Configuring

Managing Smilies

Understanding Forum Permissions

Understanding User Permissions

Usergroups and Group Permissions

Second Look into Database Backups and Restore

The Board’s Human Side: Flamewars and Banning

Chapter 7: Creating Your Own Template

Sketching the Layout

TPL Stands for Template

Making Your Template Folder

Editors for .tpl Documents

Ready, Set, Go!

CSS

Modifying the Forum Index in index_body.tpl

Modifying the Forum Body in viewforum_body.tpl

And the Story Continues

Icons and Images

Final Touches

Summary

Chapter 8: Creating a New MOD

Introduction to MODs and Hacks

Before You Begin

Creating a Simple MOD: A New BBCode Tag

Make Your MOD Accessible to the World

Summary

Chapter 9: Programming phpBB

Hello phpBB World!

Working with the Database

Using phpBB Messages

Using phpBB’s Multi-Language System

Using phpBB Templates

User Authentication

Recent Postings MOD

Summary

What You Will Learn

This book will give you the skills to setup your own phpBB-powered discussion forum and online community. You will learn how to create, customize, and manage your own phpBB-powered community.

Install and configure phpBB

Learn the basics of working with phpBB forums

Manage topics, postings, smilies and users

Understand phpBB themes and styles

Customize the look of your phpBB site

Master forum permissions to protect your community

Create a phpBB theme from scratch

Creating a phpBB modification

Packaging and making your modification available to others

Custom programming of phpBB

In Detail

phpBB is a free, open source Internet community application, with outstanding discussion forums and membership management. Written in the PHP scripting language, and making use of the popular MySQL database, phpBB is a standard among web hosting companies throughout the world, and is one of the most widely-used bulletin board packages in the world. phpBB short-circuits the need for you to be a web development master in order to create and manage massive online communities. phpBB handles sites of all sizes, the largest known phpBB-powered site on the Internet handles over 1.5 million members and has 191 million posts to the forums! The book begins with the initial installation and configuration of phpBB on your system, with troubleshooting tips to help you through. You will then go on a tour of phpBB and its features, stepping you through the basic tasks, growing your understanding and familiarizing you with the power of phpBB. Everybody wants their community to look special, and customizing your forum is the next stop in the book. Beginning with a detailed rundown of styles and themes, you will then see how to customize your forum by first modifying existing styles, adding new elements, and even creating a new style from scratch. The book then goes onto cover further administration of your community, creating hacks or "modifications" for phpBB, custom PHP programming with phpBB, and reference appendices with more phpBB resources, the phpBB file and directory structure, guides to the BBCode and permission systems, and the phpBB database structure round off this book.

Authors

Jeremy Rogers

Jeremy Rogers has been developing web-based applications in PHP and other languages for a little more than six years.

Mike Lothar

Mike Lothar has been around as a web designer for several years, both as a freelance artist working for some of the major Danish advertising companies, and as a co-founder of an independent web com

Stoyan Stefanov

Stoyan Stefanov is a Facebook engineer, author, and speaker. He talks regularly about web development topics at conferences and his blog www.phpied.com, and also runs a number of other sites, including JSPatterns.com—a site dedicated to exploring JavaScript patterns. Previously at Yahoo!, Stoyan was the architect of YSlow 2.0 and creator of the image optimization tool Smush.it.

A "citizen of the world", Stoyan was born and raised in Bulgaria, but is also a Canadian citizen, currently residing in Los Angeles, California. In his offline moments, he enjoys playing the guitar, taking flying lessons, and spending time at the Santa Monica beaches with his family.

Alerts & Offers

Series & Level

We understand your time is important. Uniquely amongst the major publishers, we seek to develop and publish the broadest range of learning and information products on each technology. Every Packt product delivers a specific learning pathway, broadly defined by the Series type. This structured approach enables you to select the pathway which best suits your knowledge level, learning style and task objectives.

Learning

As a new user, these step-by-step tutorial guides will give you all the practical skills necessary to become competent and efficient.

Beginner's Guide

Friendly, informal tutorials that provide a practical introduction using examples, activities, and challenges.

Essentials

Fast paced, concentrated introductions showing the quickest way to put the tool to work in the real world.

Cookbook

A collection of practical self-contained recipes that all users of the technology will find useful for building more powerful and reliable systems.

Blueprints

Guides you through the most common types of project you'll encounter, giving you end-to-end guidance on how to build your specific solution quickly and reliably.

Mastering

Take your skills to the next level with advanced tutorials that will give you confidence to master the tool's most powerful features.

Starting

Accessible to readers adopting the topic, these titles get you into the tool or technology so that you can become an effective user.

Progressing

Building on core skills you already have, these titles share solutions and expertise so you become a highly productive power user.